<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<meta charset="UTF-8">
<title>Paved with Good Intentions by OldBeginningNewEnding</title>
<style type="text/css">

body { background-color: #ffffff; }
.CI {
text-align:center;
margin-top:0px;
margin-bottom:0px;
padding:0px;
}
.center   {text-align: center;}
.cover    {text-align: center;}
.full     {width: 100%; }
.quarter  {width: 25%; }
.smcap    {font-variant: small-caps;}
.u        {text-decoration: underline;}
.bold     {font-weight: bold;}
</style>
</head>
<body>
<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27271882">Paved with Good Intentions</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/OldBeginningNewEnding/pseuds/OldBeginningNewEnding'>OldBeginningNewEnding</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman &amp; Terry Pratchett</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Between Nanny and Brother Francis / Crowley and Aziraphale, Child Murder, Conduct Disorder, Dark Crowley (Good Omens), Dead Dove: Do Not Eat, Demon True Forms, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, Exactly What It Says on the Tin, Gen, Implied Relationships, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Implied/Referenced Torture, Referenced Animal Abuse</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-10-30</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-10-30</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-07 03:00:30</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>3,336</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/27271882</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/OldBeginningNewEnding/pseuds/OldBeginningNewEnding</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Nanny told him not to listen to Brother Francis. Brother Francis told him not to listen to Nanny. But Nanny told him not to listen to Brother Francis. But Brother Francis told him not to listen to Nanny—</p><p><i>It's like tug-of-war,</i> Warlock thought.</p><p>And Nanny was winning.</p><p>or</p><p>Demonic influence can wreak havoc on a child.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>25</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>35</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>Trickety-Boo! Exchange</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Paved with Good Intentions</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><ul class="associations">
      <li>For <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/fenrislorsrai/gifts">fenrislorsrai</a>.</li>



    </ul><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Gift for fenrislorsrai for the Trickety-Boo2020 Exchange~ It's definitely a bit of a spin on your request, but I hope you like it all the same! Happy Halloween! 🎃😈</p><p>Special thank you to CumaeanSibyl and Faye over at the GO-Events Discord server for beta reading! 💕</p><p>*** Spooky Level 3: "level three is your hardcore spooky content. This means potential major and minor character death, very scary/disturbing images or concepts, major dark themes, major violence, etc." - Trickety-Boo 2020***</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <hr/><p>
  <em>“Why are you interested in applying for this position?”</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“Because I heard a lonely little boy needed someone to play with.”</em>
</p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>If Warlock cared to give an explanation, the six-year-old would have blamed it on his newest nanny being a monster.</p><p>Not the kind that lived under children’s beds. Not the kind that lurked in closets with razor-sharp fangs and crescent-moon smiles. Not the kind that waited in the quiet dark with wind-whisper voices. And certainly not the kind summoned by witching circles, bathroom mirrors, and cursed board games. </p><p>(She had been summoned by the ad Mrs. Harriet Dowling placed instead.)</p><p>Nanny Ashtoreth was none of these things.</p><p>Instead, Nanny was <em>other </em>things. Things only a six-year-old boy in a big, lonely house with no other playmates could notice. Like how cold the room got whenever Nanny came through the doors. How there was always a hint of something burning in the air when she was near. How Nanny never took off her colored spectacles even when they were inside, at night, in Warlock’s darkened bedroom as the boy settled for bed.</p><p>And how behind those dark spectacles, something seemed to glow an eerie, fiery shade in the gloom of the evening when she sat at the foot of his bed, spinning a bedtime tale in her hushed, lulling voice.</p><p>
  <em>(The stories were always about naughty children doing naughty things and getting the very best prizes for it.)</em>
</p><p>The nights would end the same way and Warlock, no longer wary of slithering beasts and crawling horrors, would slip off to exhausted slumber, knowing that within the inky blackness of his bedroom, no monsters laid waiting to gobble him up.</p><p>Not when Nanny was more frightening than any creature of the dark.</p><p>And in the quiet of his dreams, Warlock only saw stretching shadows, heard the drifting of hushed lullabies, and caught glimpses of blood-red hair and the distinct clacking of heels somewhere nearby.</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>If Warlock cared to give an explanation, the seven-year-old would have blamed it on Nanny telling him to.</p><p>Nanny told him it was okay to throw a fit. That it was okay to kick, scratch, and bite when he didn’t get his way. That it was okay to yell at the staff that shooed him away to his room, scream at his mother who took away his toys, and tell his father <em>You’re not my real dad anyways—</em>just like Nanny had told him in secret.</p><p>And always, <em>always</em>, Nanny would be there to wipe away his tears and soothe the heaviness on his shoulders that threatened to crumple him up like a wad of paper. And like always, she would scoop what remained of him into her arms after he cried so much it felt like he had emptied everything out of him. She’d offer him treats and praises, soft, fragile little things that little boys couldn’t hold in their hands without breaking into tiny pieces, always sorry and greedy for more.</p><p>She would promise him that things weren’t always going to be this way, and something in the way her eyes seemed to glow behind those black spectacles made him believe that if he listened well and did what he was told, that he was meant for bigger, greater, <em>terrible </em>things.</p><p>Others in the house told Warlock that it wasn’t right and proper to act in such a way. His father paid him no mind and told him only to listen to himself and his mother. His mother told him that Nanny was wrong and that she’d have a talk with Nanny and if Nanny continued this, she’d be going away for telling <em>her </em>son such bad things.</p><p>
  <em>(But no, Nanny would still be there: would be there to wake him in the morning and there to tuck him in at night and sing him lullabies, and his mother would have no recollection of being cross with Nanny the next day.)</em>
</p><p>The maids, the cooks, the men in suits that lined up like toy soldiers when his dad came home—they would tell him that the things Nanny said were wrong.</p><p>But Brother Francis would tell him that <em>Nanny</em> was wrong.</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>“Aren’t you being a bit excessive?”</p><p>“There’s nothing excessive about it. I’m just doing my half of the job.”</p><p>“Well, I’m trying my best, but Cro<em>—Nanny, </em>perhaps you could teach him to be a bit...nicer?”</p><p>“<em>Nice? </em>You know I’m not <em>nice.</em>” </p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>No matter what Nanny said, Warlock knew not to play a trick on Brother Francis.</p><p>Warlock didn’t know why, but the gardener always seemed to know when he did bad.</p><p>And when he did, something in turn picked and chewed at his skin, niggled at the back of his brain, whenever Brother Francis needlessly asked if he’d been a good boy since he last visited. And whenever Warlock lied, the words in his mouth burnt like ash. When this happened, Brother Francis would click his tongue and ask that he tell the truth. And whenever he told the truth, pinpricks of <em>something </em>tingled unpleasantly beneath his skin. When this happened, Brother Francis would only chastise him and encourage him to <em>Do better, do good!</em></p><p>But other times, Brother Francis looked at him with saddened eyes and Warlock felt a weight leaden his legs, pulling him down, down, <em>down,</em> trudging up the dirt as he sluggishly trailed behind the stout man, kicking up the fresh daisies Brother Francis had lovingly planted despite the gardener’s chiding.</p><p>The heaviness in him with each meeting made the boy more and more avoidant of the soft-hearted gardener, something in the brightness and love that Brother Francis was so eager to teach him making it harder and harder to look at the gardener as time went on.</p><p>(<em>It was guilt, maybe. But Nanny didn’t believe in such things and she told him neither should he.</em>)</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>Brother Francis and Nanny didn’t agree on a lot of things.</p><p>Brother Francis told him not to listen to what she said, to always do good. He told him to be kind, be obedient, to be courteous and sweet, and that showing love would beget love in return.</p><p>It made sense to a seven-year-old Warlock. It made sense to be kind and surely, he was a kind boy before Nanny was here and surely, he could be kind again if he truly wanted.</p><p>But all too often, doing the right thing, being good and obedient<em>, </em>sweet and loving, went unnoticed by busy staff, absent and absent-minded parents, and so only Nanny was there to sneer at him for heeding the gardener’s words. The little spectacles perched on her nose did nothing to hide her ire as something in the boy curdled like milk at her disappointed gaze. </p><p>
  <em>(That night, he was sent to bed without supper after playing a mean trick on his father. Nanny was there to hold him and slip him a delicious cake from the kitchens as a reward.)</em>
</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>Nanny and the gardener were night and day.</p><p>But they were always together, for some reason. It must be because they never minded each other’s company.</p><p>He’d even heard Nanny call Brother Francis <em>angel, </em>once—</p><p>
  <em>heard her say it in a teasing, deep voice against the shell of the gardener’s ear, draping her thin, spindly arms over his shoulder, the red of her lipstick close enough to tickle his skin</em>
</p><p>—and Warlock wondered, if Brother Francis was an angel<em>, </em>what did that make Nanny?</p><p>The maids said that there must be something between them—<em>“Lovers? Well...they do make <strong>quite</strong> the pair..."</em>—but to the eight-year-old with no other playmates, who’d orbited the two strangest hires of the big, lonely Dowling household, there was something else. Something else as the two talked in hushed, furtive voices to one another beneath the apple trees, one swathed in dark and the other adorned in light, each taking quick glances at the young boy playing nearby, a wicked smile curling up on Nanny's red, red lips as Brother Francis set his mouth to a frown.</p><p>((<em>—Nanny told him not to listen to Brother Francis. Brother Francis told him not to listen to Nanny. But Nanny told him not to listen to Brother Francis. But Brother Francis told him not to listen to Nanny—</em>))</p><p><em>Like tug-of-war</em>, Warlock thought.</p><p>And Nanny was winning.</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p>
  <em>This was not guilt: guilt is what you feel when you have done something wrong. What I felt was shame: I was what was wrong.</em>
</p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>As the seasons changed, Nanny grew more and more tired of hers and Brother Francis’s little game. Maybe even grew tired of Warlock himself. Warlock knew this as, over the years, she grew <em>colder</em>, no longer giving her sharp, pencil-thin smiles when Warlock did something naughty, no longer giving her chuffed little laughs when Warlock did something he <em>knew </em>wasn’t right.</p><p>She no longer coddled him when his outbursts became too much for his parents to bear. No longer snuck him cakes and pressed kisses atop his head when the school called to let his mother know he’d been truant for a week straight. No longer gave her piecrust-promises and eggshell-assurances that <em>things will get better</em> when his father, brandishing burns and scars on his arms and face, screamed to <em>FUCKING <strong>INSTITUTIONALIZE</strong> HIM, HARRIET </em>when the maids found matches and lighters hidden away under his bed.</p><p>But that was something Warlock no longer cared for.</p><p><em>It's fun,</em> he thought, as he hid sewing needles in pies and threw a newborn kitten to the hungry, wild dogs, and drowned his fourth hamster, water flooding its ball when Warlock wanted to see how long it took for Nibbles the Fourth to float.</p><p>It was fun for him and no one else and that was the way Warlock learned to see the world: that others were little more than wee insects scuttering about, meant to be ground under his heels.</p><p>
  <strike>Once, a long time ago, the gardener had told him to be kind and nice to everybody, but Brother Francis wasn’t Nanny, and Warlock didn’t need to listen to him.</strike>
</p><p>He still stayed away from Brother Francis.</p><p>And not just because that <em>something </em>that used to scratch and pick at him, now <em>burned</em>, bubbling and broiling beneath his skin’s surface whenever the disfigured man uselessly asked if Warlock had been a good boy<em>, </em>but because the first and only time Nanny had struck him was when Warlock had started a rumor that the gardener had tried to touch him in a naughty place.</p><p>But it was fine.</p><p>If Nanny wanted no more of him, kept her face impassive and thoughts hidden behind the black tints of her spectacles, it was fine. If even he was too much for his dear Nanny to bear—just like his mother, his father, the staff and doctors who just<em> don’t know what to do with him!</em>—</p><p>It was <em>fine</em>.</p><p>If they wanted him medicated, it was fine. If his parents wanted to send him to specialists who prodded useless question after useless question at him with their blank stares and fake smiles and gave him liquids, pills, and special diets that made him sleepy and made his brain fuzzy, <em>it was <strong>fine</strong></em>.</p><p>
  <strike>He’d taken to hiding them under his tongue, slipping the smaller pills between his upper lip and teeth when Nanny and mother asked him to open his mouth anyhow.</strike>
</p><p>If Warlock cared to give an explanation, he wouldn’t blame it on years of neglect, on monsters fitted in black pencil skirts, and a well-meaning gardener who possessed too little influence over the demons of childhood traumas and the devils roaming the big, lonely house that poisoned the boy with sanguine lies and saccharine promises.</p><p>Ten-year-old Warlock Dowling would instead insist that he no longer needed his Nanny’s treats and praises, soft, fragile, empty little things that, once broken, had nothing inside but wriggling worms.</p><p>His own enjoyment was the best prize of all.</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>"He's completely out of control!"</p><p>"Yeah...probably overdid it, didn't I?"</p><p>"He brought a <em>knife</em> to school—and you know he's tormenting the other children in his class! Cro—<em>Nanny</em>, this is getting worse—"</p><p>"Look, I tried all right? It's not my fault <em>you</em> couldn't get through to the little brat."</p><p>"It's…it’s much more difficult to save a soul than to damn one. <em>You</em> of all people know this."</p><p>"<em>Right</em>. Well…There's always the other option."</p><p>"What...what other option?"</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>Nanny was leaving.</p><p>She said this as she entered his darkened room, settling at the side of his bed in a way that she hadn’t done so in years—not since Warlock had assured himself that he’d grown too old for her stories, too old for her hugs and kisses, too old to be coddled and tears wiped away.</p><p>
  <em>(Assured himself after Nanny no longer told him stories, no longer hugged him goodbye and no longer kissed him goodnight, no longer soothed his hurt and eased his fears.)</em>
</p><p>The telltale glow behind her spectacles had grown to be a familiar sight over the years and a sear of hurt tore right through his skin as she sat there just as she did so many times all those years ago.</p><p>“<em>Why</em>?” Warlock sneered, a wounded animal baring its teeth. “You were the one who wanted me like this, weren't you?” He knew what this was about—knew what it was <em>always </em>about. Knew this when his mother screamed at him as another maid fled the house, knew this as his father sent him away when people came over to visit. <em>Too much, you’re too much, why are you like this, why can’t you be good, why can’t you be <strong>normal</strong></em>—“I did everything you wanted, Nanny. Are you scared of me?”</p><p>All those years—Warlock <em>knew</em> something had gone wrong, something budding and blooming inside him had withered and rotted within his core, seeds that Nanny had nurtured that Brother Francis could not prune—</p><p>
  <em>She <strong>made</strong> him like this.</em>
</p><p>He choked off a laugh, <em>burning </em>at the back of his eyes, the back of his throat, clawing and scrabbling to let out its venom. “Shouldn't you be proud?<em>”</em></p><p>Nanny turned to him, her face softening as she did when she sang him lullabies and told him her bedtime tales and promised him that nothing that crept in the dark of his room was scarier than her and that nothing scarier than her could hurt him, and something within the young, young child fractured. "Oh, you would have made a <em>fine</em> ruler, Little King," she whispered.</p><p>She inched closer to the bed and Warlock’s heart sickened with the thought of her looking upon him with pity.</p><p>But something else sickened his heart as Nanny said,<em> "You would have inherited it all."</em></p><p>
  <em>Would have.</em>
</p><p>"All the best prizes go to the naughtiest children," he echoed back as the temperature in the room plummeted. This was not the reason for the chill that trickled down his spine. “And wasn’t I the naughtiest<em>, </em>Nanny?” he said, ignoring the hairs that stood on the back of his neck, the curl of his nose as the faintest stench of something acrid and <em>burning </em>as Nanny sat at the edge of his bed.</p><p>Because Nanny was right all along—he had fun, hadn't he? People listened to him. His parents <em>looked </em>at him, sat down to talk with him, begged, pleaded with him. People were quick to nod <em>Yes </em>to him and were quick to give him what he wanted—</p><p>(But not really.)</p><p>And most of all—</p><p>Nanny had been <em>proud</em> of him.</p><p>
  <em>(But not really.)</em>
</p><p>She didn't look proud as she crept closer to him, her long, thin shadow growing larger the closer she stood by the lamplight. In fact—</p><p>She didn't even look sorry as she stooped down to give her final goodbye.</p><p>If Warlock cared to give an explanation, he would have said that Nanny was leaving anyways and nothing he could do or say would stop her. All the years he spent under her direction, her instruction, her bidding—all for those cookie-crumb pieces of affection he’d greedily gobbled—all to be suddenly wiped clean.</p><p>She was the one who wanted to wash her hands of him. The filthy, <em>disgusting </em>child who made his mother cry, drove his father to drink, tortured the staff and ran amok on his goldbrick throne and plastic crown, a blight on their house, a <em>monster </em>in child’s flesh with only wriggling worms beneath.</p><p>What did it matter if he was naughty to her for once?</p><p>But if Warlock cared to give an explanation, he would have said that it had been his last chance to see behind those spectacles—see what Nanny really thought of the child she’d reared, the devil she’d raised, the little hellion Nanny had nurtured.</p><p>Which was precisely why he swiped them clean off Nanny Ashtoreth’s nose.</p><p>Except.</p><p>It wasn't Nanny.</p><p>
  <em>Not really.         </em>
</p><p>In fact, Warlock was fairly sure that it wasn't even human.</p><p>But that was fine, because<em>—</em>Nanny wasn't some creature that crunched on bones and drained blood like the bitter drinks she and Brother Francis shared; Nanny wasn't some creature that stalked in the shadows with sharp blades and a clumsy, ambling gait; Nanny wasn't some creature that stole away children from their homes and their beds and dragged them down, down, <em>down</em> to the deepest, blackest pits where none could hear their cries.</p><p>Because Nanny had always been more frightening than any creature of the dark.</p><p>From the lamp’s dying light, Warlock could make out the glint of too-sharp, <em>too-long </em>teeth, a too-wide, gaping maw, and smooth, shiny scales framing those fire-bright, glowing eyes. With every second ticking away, with every blink of his watering eyes, the creature drew back, growing, towering and <em>massive</em>, impossibly large in this impossibly small room.</p><p>It stared back at him, charred wings spread wide, swallowing the last of the light, smothering the boy from the world outside, as coal-dust feathers fell like ash all around him.</p><p>Warlock opened his mouth in a scream.</p><p>Nothing came out. </p><p>The room was sweltering now. Even then, the ice-grip of <em>fear </em>clutched at his insides as Warlock choked on the smell of <em>burning</em>, gagged at the stench of something <em>rotten</em> and <em>vile</em> as he uselessly backed away and cornered himself.</p><p>Crowned in black fire, its horns suspended the fragments of a broken and burnt halo and its coils barricaded the bed, <em>slithering</em> and <em>crawling</em> across the floorboards, red and black bleeding together in chains against the creature’s body as low hisses drowned out the silence and dark of his room.</p><p>((<em>A snake in Brother Francis’s garden that slithered all the way to the house—</em>))</p><p>What was once Nanny lowered its head, eyes—<em>hundreds</em> and <em>hundreds</em> of polished, soulless mirrors—locked on to its quaking prey. It opened its mouth wider, revealing rows and rows of needle-point teeth, crowded together as the sickly, sweet, cloying stench of <em>death </em>dripped from its fangs.</p><p>((<em>And bought a child’s soul with sweets made of glass and apples filled with worms, writhing and burrowing its way to the child’s empty center to fester.</em>))</p><p>"<em>It'ssss ssssuch a ssssshame you didn't grow bettahhhh,"</em> what was once Nanny hissed in a low, unfamiliar voice, before it lunged.</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>If Warlock cared to give an explanation for what happened that night—</p><p>Well. He wouldn’t be able to tell you. At least, not directly.</p><p>Instead what the maids found was a cold, unmoving boy in his bed with empty pill bottles by his table, and his parents would let out a loud, wailing mourning with a marrow-deep <em>shame</em> as they cried and drank in sorrow, in relief.</p><p>But all that could be said of what <em>truly</em> happened to Warlock Dowling were spoken in a row of pinprick points dotting the skin above his heart, barely centimeters apart, and as neat and final as punctuation marks at the end of a sentence that none could understand.</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>“No dog.”</p><p>
  <em>“No dog.”</em>
</p><p>“Wrong boy.”</p><p><em>“Wrong boy.”</em> </p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>*Atul Gawande, <i>Complications: A Surgeon's Notes on an Imperfect Science</i></p><p>There’s also a <i>Poisonwood Bible</i> reference in here as well~ </p><p>Happy Halloween!~ 🎃👻😈💀</p></blockquote></div></div>
</body>
</html>